LSE students win City Year's Next Generation Challenge

April 2013 │ London

Three LSE students won the first City Year Next Generation Challenge, a new competition in partnership with the Westminster based King Solomon Academy, the LSE and Deutsche Bank.

The Next Generation Challenge was designed to test LSE student’s creativity and tutoring skills, inspiring them to design fun, after school activities for young people. It challenged students to create an inspiring after school workshop that exposed the Year 8 pupils to a new subject or skill. Ten ideas were entered into the competition ranging from a Bollywood dancing lesson to a workshop that explored the theme of happiness.

The winners were Richard Serunjogi (studying Social Policy), Hakki Mustafa (studying Economic History) and Fifi Kara (studying Social Anthropology). Their workshop was designed to give teams of pupils the opportunity to explore a big social policy problem, like climate change or drug abuse. It tested the pupils’ abilities to research the issue and challenged them to design posters to raise awareness of the topic with their peers.

One of the winners, Hakki Mustafa said: “It was an inspiring experience and I was proud to take part. I felt it was mutually beneficial for the pupils and us as students. We learnt how to manage a class of Year 8’s and how to communicate with them and build team-leadership.”

Head of recruitment at City Year, Eric Mtungwazi said: “We are very pleased with how the competition unfolded. Not only did the KSA pupils have a memorable experience, but they also hopefully gained a valuable insight into what students are like and will feel inspired to do well at school and go to university themselves.

Last year Deutsche Bank became the first sponsor of one of City Year’s secondary school based teams, serving at King Solomon Academy, Westminster. Deutsche Bank is committed to helping young people realize and achieve their full potential, helping to address youth unemployment through preventative programmes.

Deutsche Bank’s Director of Diversity and Leadership in the UK, Siri Nomme said: “Deutsche Bank’s partnership with City Year, whose work we support at King Solomon Academy, has had impact against our commitment to young people but also across our diversity and recruitment aims: a fantastic partnership. The Next Generation Challenge concept was great. The workshops designed by the LSE students were well thought out and the KSA students responded enthusiastically to each of them.”